How to “Copy as Unicode” from a Notebook?

Question

I spent some time manually editing a post replacing Mathematica ASCII \[Alpha] with Unicode α. I did this by laboriously choosing Copy as LaTeX, pasting into the edit box, and then copying the Unicode symbol from the preview below. This made me realize I am lacking a "Copy as Unicode string" function in Mathematica.

How can I most easily copy an expression such as:

In Unicode:

αβ + Mod[δΨ, 2 ⁢ρ^2]

Answer 1

Since a native method is not forthcoming, I shall post my file based circumvention, for Windows.

You will need to have this utility in the command path (it apparently is stock with Windows 7).

copyUnicode[expr_] := Run["clip <",
   Export["$Clipboard.temp", ToString[expr, InputForm],
          "Text", CharacterEncoding -> "Unicode"] ];

Usage:

expr = \[Alpha]\[Beta] + Mod[\[Delta]\[CapitalPsi], 2\[InvisibleTimes]\[Rho]^2];

copyUnicode[expr]

This leaves the following text in the Windows Clipboard:

αβ + Mod[δΨ, 2*ρ^2]

Answer 2

To circumvent Mathematica's internal representation, I decided to use the operating system. Of course, this means it's only going to work on Mac OS X because it uses Cocoa bindings in the built-in Python interpreter:

copyAsUnicode[t_] := Module[{
   out = FileNameJoin[{$TemporaryDirectory, 
      "MathematicaOutput" <> StringJoin[Map[ToString, DateList[]]] <> 
       ".rtf"}]
   },
  Export[out, t];
  Run["printf \"from AppKit import *\n\
board=NSPasteboard.generalPasteboard()\n\
content=NSData.dataWithContentsOfFile_('" <> out <> 
    "')\nboard.declareTypes_owner_([NSRTFPboardType], None)\n\
board.setData_forType_(content, NSRTFPboardType)\n\" | \
/usr/bin/python"];
  DeleteFile[out]
]

The idea is to export to RTF and read the result to the clipboard outside of Mathematica. The function is invoked for example as copyAsUnicode["αβ+Mod[δΨ+ρ2]"]. This example itself was copied that way, too, i.e., I typed copyAsUnicode["copyAsUnicode[\"αβ+Mod[δΨ+ρ2]\"]"], which I again copied the same way... OK, I think you get the idea.

Of course the next step would be to make this into a Palette that acts on the NotebookSelection, but the above is the main step. Maybe someone else knows how to do something like this in other operating systems (I don't).